[POLL] What VMware ESXi version are you using?

[Gostev]

Please vote to help us determine VMware ESXi version support requirements for the future releases.

[steve.lavoie]

I work for a small VMware Enterprise/Veeam Partner(silver), our customer base are SMB.

Most customer upgrade their VMware version annually, but 40-50% of SMB will stay with their original version, and will only change at hardware platform change (3 year). So I still have customer on ESXi 4.0, 4.1 and so one with older version of Veeam too. But I rarely see, old ESXi with newer Veeam. What caused me more problem is Veeam v7 only available on 64bits system.

I would say that I upgraded my last ESXi 3.5u2 free with Veeam Backup, just recently....

[kingswaygroup]

Lowest version is currently 3.5 with the majority at 4.0 & 4.1.

[stgepopp]

Lowest version is 4.0
Majority is 5.1

[p.demoura]

1 x ESX3.5

3 x esxi 4.0

7 x esxi 4.1

12 x esxi 5.0

6 x esxi 5.1

1x esxi 5.5

[MaartenK]

The lowest version we see is version 4. We are pushing our customers to the newest version. Because of the S&S they have from VMware.

Also Windows 2012 support is sometime the reason customer have to update to ESX5.x.

We did an upgrade from 3.5 to version 5.1 last month. So we don`t have any 3.5 versions running.

We now testing ESX5.5 in combination with Veeam7R2. Especially the support for Exchange 2013 (and now Sharepoint 2013 ) is a great advantage. Every customers is really impressed what Veeam can do. We give al lot of demos so customers can see what Veeam can do in real world instead of whitepapers. Veeam sells its self that way

[stephaneb]

A bunch of 4.x that are yet to be upgraded to 5.x
All new deployments are in 5.x

[Gostev]

Thank you all, great responses and participation.

Based on the results so far, it sounds like:

1. We can safely drop support for ESX(i) 3.5 in the very next release (H1 2014). Especially considering that VMware does not support ESX(i) 3.5 any longer (even the extended support ended in May 2013).

2. We can consider dropping ESX(i) 4.0 support in the following release (we are talking at least 1 year from now).

3. Most likely, we will need to keep ESX(i) 4.1 support a bit longer even despite of VMware support timelines, because this is the last "fat" ESX available from VMware, and I heard from some customers that they have processes and procedures in place which prevent them from upgrading to ESXi. I will do another poll for this one around 2015.

Reasons why we would like to start dropping older ESXi versions support:

1. Less platforms to test against ultimately means better quality of support for the remaining platforms (meaning better product quality for 99% of our users).

2. VMware no longer supports older ESX(i) versions in the latest VDDK (vStorage API for Data Protection) versions, requiring us to ship the product with multiple VDDK versions. Older VDDK versions have plenty of bugs and complicate testing significantly (we need to validate that our hooks and workarounds still work with every regression testing).

[dellock6]

I heard several storage vendors claiming the most common version at their customers is still 4.1 (although not backed by any official stats), so keeping it for a while would be a good choice indeed. Anther reason usually I hear is lack of updated firmware to install newer ESXi on the servers, and budget constraints make them decide to keep the "old" servers still in place. Also many of the newest VMware features are commonly released onto the highest editions, and not all customers are willing to pay extra bucks for features they do not really need...

Luca.

[bd134492]

56 x ESXi 5.1

[Pkaer]

Lowest version is 5.0
Majority is 5.1

[drp0218]

5.1

[honestabe00]

5.1

[Toschwil]

I vote for 5.x cause i Update/Upgrade most Customers asap to the newest Version.
I think that voting will change massive after the Support End of Windows 2003 (April 2014)---

[hscox030]

ESXi 5.1, upgrading to 5.5 within couple months.

[andyadla]

ESXi 5.1 on everything

[gsimpson]

ESXi 5.0 Enterprise Plus

Moving to Hyper-V 2012 R2 over the next few months.

[ovalsquare]

ESXi 5.5

[brianh]

ESXi 5.0

[ITP-Stan]

Mostly 5.1, some still on 5.0 and rarely some still with 4.1. Nothing lower. I have voted for 5.x as this is 90% of our customerbase.

[francs]

Vmware partner supporting 5 sites all of them are running 5.1

[Beatle.Uy]

We have only one ESXi 4.1 which will be upgraded next year and the rest are all 5.x

[TieT]

4.1
5.1
and 5.5

[EddyChong]

Lowest 4.0, majority 5.X. In mid way to propose upgrade for our customers to upgrade to 5.x

[anthony.yip]

May i know what is the lowest Esxi that Veeam v8 currently support ?

[veremin]

ESX(i) 4.0

[Gostev]

And starting v9, it will be ESX(i) 4.1 or later > [POLL] your VMware vSphere version plans for late 2015

[Tikanderoga]

Running 6.0 at the moment.

[Gostev]

Locking this topic now as this poll has ended 1.5 years ago